Renee's Place

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We visited Renee's Place a couple weeks ago, a Chinese restaurant whose street vibe is quite different than your average Chinese place. This is what we ate:

Shanghai Juicy Steamed Buns
Delicate, steamed spoon-sized dumplings filled with broth and ground pork, served with Shanghai-style ginger-vinegar sauce.

These were tasty, served before our meal. As per usual, they were hot and I was hungry so while I can testify they were good, I can't say just how good because I tended to hot!hot!hot! them down my throat before my tongue was able to fully explore the offering.

Lion's Head
Pork meatballs lightly fried then steamed with ginger and scallions, reserved juice reduced over high flame, dressed over meatballs and a bed of spinach.

THIS WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF OUR TRIP. I can't possibly hope to begin to express how delicious and flavorful and perfect these meatballs were. This are worth the trip to Renee's. Unquestionably the highlight of our visit. Buy three or four plates, methinks.

Stir-Fried Mixed Vegetables
Stir fried broccoli, snow peas, carrots, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, zucchini and Napa cabbage.

All the vegetables were good, but the mix and sauce and whatever were a bit unremarkable. Perhaps this means it was healthier? Who knows. Anyway, it was boring.

Iron Plate Beef
A combination of broccoli, mushroom, green onion, baby corn, stir-fried in black pepper and garlic sauce. Served on a heated iron plate with fresh julienned onions.

This is just what it says, and good, if a little dull. Much like the mixed vegetables in that way.

Steamed Organic Brown Rice

It was only half full and we resented how little rice this represented, but we changed our minds when we ran out just at the right time. Granted, this probably means we paved ourselves and thus ate less than rice than usual, but that's probably not a bad thing.

So it appears that pork is the way to go at Renee's. Definitely get some Lion's Head. What else you get is up to you, but I would recommend neither of our other two entrees. Try something else.

China Village

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We hit China Village with just our youngest (2) and oldest (8) and proceeded to order way too much food. Not knowing much about Szechuan food (and not knowing till just now, as we look at their website, that this is their specialty), we don't know if we ordered the Szechuany-enough stuff. Definitely the sweet-and-sour pork is not wildly different from any American Chinese place.

(Note on the website: the order of dishes and prices are not completely up to date on the menu.)

Anyway, with the water and tea (which smelled delicious but which we did not imbibe), pre-order we were given a kimchi-like cabbage-and-garlic dish. Spicy (but not terribly spicy) and quite sweet. Theric liked it. Lady Steed tried one piece. Baby Steed pushed a piece around his place. The Big O didn't try any.

Then, as noted above, we ordered way to much. One item off the menu will feed at least one and a third persons. Keep that in mind when ordering.

Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple $9.95

While typical, this was among the finest sweet-and-sour porks we've ever had. The Big O, this being his first time, fell deeply in love. As Lady Steed points out, this (and all the dishes below) lack that unpleasant overgreasiness common to many Chinese restaurants. She also claims the meal lacked added MSG, but Theric is skeptical of her ability to identify MSG.

XO Sauce Beef $10.95 ("XO is a slowly made, 20 ingredient sauce")

We picked this dish in part because we wanted to get at least one dish marked with a * signifying "Hot and Spicy"; it wasn't. This is particularly disappointing because the Michelin notation they've attached to the front of each menu begins by saying, "High tolerance for tongue-numbing, lip-scorching spice? China Village will happily oblige." So that was disappointing. The taste, however, was still excellent. Even Theric who does not eat mushrooms was stunned by the tastiness of the mushrooms. This was the only of the main dishes which we finished at the restaurant.

One note: As with the pork (above, and the noodles below), the cuts were not what 2012 white Americans like ourselves consider the best cuts. Read: lots of fat and gristle as a percentage of the whole. If that's your thing. (The snappy pea pods and zucchini made up for this some.)

Mandarin Deluxe Pan Fried Noodles $9.95

We got it with chicken which, being a bird, made for a nice touch as the stiff fried noodles looked a bit like the sort of twiggery another type of bird might use to make a nest. So a nice nest filled with greens and sauce and chunks of bird made for a lovely presentation. And a tasty one. Sections were delightfully gingery, but poor Lady Steed did not get any of those sections and found the whole a little lackluster.

Classic Fried Rice with . . . vegetables $7.95

This is was the baby went to town on. Lady Steed calls it perhaps the best fried rice she's ever had (perhaps, she notes, because it was brown?). And it was a giant heaping mound; no risk of running out of this stuff. Theric appreciated the eggs which we done just as he likes. Lady Steed liked the actual, visible hunks of vegetables.

Shrimp Dumpling (4 PC) $4.95

Bought because Big O loves shrimp, he ate two lickety split. Baby Steed ate a third; Theric and Lady Steed split the last. Theric was the least impressed. Lady Steed liked them well enough. Big O said not the best shrimp he'd ever had. The baby did not verbalize his opinion, but did eat the whole thing during a meal in which he refused to otherwise eat anything but rice. So that sounds like an endorsement.

In the end, we brought home a lot of rice and pork and noodles and spent almost sixty dollars. If we go again, we're definitely ordering less. Substantially less. But if we're looking for higher-end Chinese, China Village will be on the short list.

Gordo's

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So I had a chicken super burrito. I was ill at the time, so this review may be suspect, but it was good but not as great as the carne asada.